Virtual Showcase 2022

Last week was my 13th showcase of projects for my 4th grade after-school Code Club and my 2nd one that was held virtually. We made it. After three weeks of working on their major independent project and some online meeting craziness, they presented 14 final (or near-final) projects.

For our virtual showcase format, a project was presented by the creator, then the students played or enjoyed the project, and finally, they gave a quick positive feedback comment while the next student got ready to present. We had 14 projects presented in one hour. Amazing.

The final projects show a great deal of creativity and variety. It is incredible how much work went into some of these projects. I am very impressed with this group of students and grateful they all took the club seriously. I know it was not an ideal situation to learn to code in an online group but these kids were pretty motivated. They were also pretty self-sufficient and knew how to advocate for themselves to get the help they needed. They were also very patient when waiting for me to help them.

I enjoyed watching their projects progress over the weeks. Here are a few projects I am particularly impressed with: The Pipe is a maze game with a cool introduction, a couple of levels, and a secret code level.

I also like Cheesy Puffs clicker: This is a clicker game with a lot of flair. I knew this coder wanted to make a clicker game so I provided some material in our classroom to support him. I think he also found other clicker games on the Scratch community to get some ideas.

I am also really impressed by Shielder. I’m not sure how this was created but I don’t doubt that the student who created this could create this.

These next four really reflect the creativity and personality of their creators.

The quality of these projects is no different from any other showcase from other Code Clubs. It is just that this virtual code club felt like a lot of work because of the virtual nature of helping students with their coding issues remotely, but the results are gratifying. I hope they find more coding opportunities in the future.

Code Club Showcase Like no Other

I just celebrated my 12th Code Club Showcase, virtually. Last year’s Code Club went virtual after three weeks due to the Pandemic and our school switching to remote learning. There was no Showcase because what the students needed at the time was a fun weekly code break and not another virtual project to work on. We were all overwhelmed.

This year, while we are now back to full-time, in-school learning, code club had to be held remotely due to school protocols. Students were more amenable to this set up this year and we reached our max during sign-up and had about a 60% retention from week to week. That meant at least 10 coders online for one hour each week.

Luckily, I was able to send home printouts of our Code Club learning projects for the students to work from. Those school Chromebooks have really small screens. I don’t like to code using them and I wouldn’t want to have to split my screen to see the learning project and Scratch at the same time. I sent home a variety of project resources, more than we had time to work through, in case the students were interested in learning on their own.

Virtual Code Club Chatbot projects

From Code Club I use the projects Felix and Herbert, Chatbot, Balloons, Scratch Cat Goes Skiing and Create your own world. I also used the Scratch cards for Make it Fly and virtual pet. This is a mixture of my standard learning projects (like Chatbot and Virtual pet) and some based on what the students told me they wanted to make (Create your own world). I put in Scratch Cat Goes Skiing as an example of a vertical scroller for a couple of reasons. One we were meeting in February and two I needed a break from the side-scrolling Flappy Parrot project.

Scratch cat goes skiing projects from virtual code club

I used Google classroom for announcements, meet links, materials and the Game design document, GDD for planning the Showcase project. It worked out well. Most students completed the GDD and I was able to find Code Club projects or Scratch cards to support their ideas. A couple of the girls didn’t have an idea for their Showcase project so I showed them (at school) what I projects I had available and they choose the virtual pet and space junk type projects to work on.

They worked on their projects for four weeks. I was able to help debug during our meetings. The students were pretty comfortable with sharing their screen so I could see their code and what was going on. There were a few tricky bits of debugging that I got caught up in each week. If we couldn’t solve it together during the meeting, I would work on the problem and post the fix (if I found it) in Google classroom. I let a couple students work on their projects in the lab during a rainy recess. This just reminded me how much better coding together in person really is. I hope we can get back to it again.

For the virtual Showcase, students took turns introducing their project and giving hints or background on how to play and why they made it. It was very informal, no parents, just all the club members. Then we would play their game. I encouraged students to “heart” like the project and leave a positive encouraging comment like a cool, or I like your music, Sprite, theme, etc. In school I ask them to provide more detailed, helpful feedback, but this wasn’t school but a club, so friendly feedback was all that was expected. Everyone did great. Everyone was positive and encouraging.

Showcase of projects from Virtual Code Club 2021

When we finished sharing and enjoying each others showcase projects, I share a studio I had put together a my pick for the Best of Code Club Showcase projects. During the prep for our showcase, I had gone back and picked a favorite project from each of the previous Showcase of Scratch projects and maybe one or two more that I find super fun.

Best of Code Club Showcase projects

It was a delightful way to spend our last virtual hour together.

Music and Art Projects

My 11th 4th-grade Code Club Showcase is coming up this week. Eleven of 13 projects are ready to go. The last two are showing good progress, so I’m not too worried. I’m seeing the usual variety of virtual pets, flappy bird, pong, quizzes, soccer, chatbot projects, etc. (and yay, no “try not to laugh” games). This current group of projects represents a lot of creativity and effort and we are going to have a great Showcase. There are also two unusual projects that I haven’t seen before.  One is a music quiz and the other a color-by-number game.

The music quiz is very creative and I love it.  This student created his own music and asks the user to identify his songs by name. You can practice by listening to the music he has created before you take the quiz.

Click the buttons to preview the music before taking the quiz.

I imagined he would code the music with the Scratch music blocks, or want to bootleg popular songs.  Instead, he used Chrome Music Lab’s Song Maker to write his own songs.  I had been experimenting with Chrome Music Lab earlier this year and was excited to see that this was his app of choice to create music.

Chrome Music Lab’s Song Maker example

The biggest problem we ran into was there is no way to save or record directly from Song Maker. I researched some other ways to record sounds from a website but the simplest we found was to plug in our microphone, start recording in Scratch and then hit the playback button from Song Maker. We made a few poor recordings from the low-quality computer speakers and noisy room and I wasn’t sure he was going to be happy with the results or that it would even be enjoyable to listen to and take his quiz.

Mr. Songs Alot project

For the final song recording, I let him record in the quieter room adjacent to the computer lab.  It turned out pretty well.  He even gave it a cool name: Mr. Songs Alot.  I hope he gets some good feedback and more students decide to try a game like this.

The other unique project was the Color-by-Number project. I’ve had students create a painting game with the Paint Box project, but not a paint-by-number type project.  I let them work on it a while but it became clear they had no idea how to code it to make the paint appear. So I went looking and I found an example of a paint-by-number project on Scratch that they could examine and learn how someone else coded it.  This is a great way to learn new techniques and algorithms in computer programming.  Software writers are great at this-trying to solve their own problems by looking at someone else’s examples- it is kind of why/how Stack Overflow came to exist.

Paint by number project

Even after they looked at it, I don’t think they understood that they had to create themselves the illusion using different Sprite costumes to make the color fill in (or they just forgot from one week to the next).

The “magic” of the paint by number is 2 different costumes for the coloring illusion.

The example had 2 costumes for each different color. One with color and one with the number in it.  When you dragged the paint bucket over the Sprite and clicked, the Sprite went from the number on it to the colored one and the paint bucket goes from filled to empty.    One team member was making the “coloring page” and the other coding the paint buckets. The “coloring page” maker kept making the pages on the Stage while I kept reminding them about the example I gave them.

I worked with the paint bucket coder and we tweaked some of his code so that it is a good project even if it is only one picture to color.

We had some issues with paint buckets when they start on top of the Sprite they were going to color and instantly coloring them in when the green flag is clicked. Also, keeping the “coloring page” Sprites on the visual layer under the buckets was tricky.  I couldn’t find the Scratch 2.0 option to make a Sprite not draggable by the user.  I might have to explore this type of project to see if I can make it into a learning project for one of my groups.

The showcase is tomorrow!!!

Update:  I found out that Song Maker has added a save feature so we can now download a wav file and import into Scratch. This is great.

Presenting at Showcase #10

Today was my 10th Code Club Showcase. I am so proud of all my coders.

We had a variety of projects, most of them well put together.  It always amazes me when they come together.  I’m also amazed at the ease the students have to present to the parents. I don’t really give them a choice and they really come through.  Today was no exception and I got to see something wonderful happen.

During our snack, I went over how the Showcase would go.  The parents will be the guests and they get to sit at the computers and play the Scratch projects. Each student will present their own project for the parents.  They will pick someone to demonstrate the project (play the game) on the interactive whiteboard while they stand up front and present.  I have them fill out a half sheet of notes about the project, including how to play, the goal, their favorite part and how they would have made it better if they had had more time.  It is basically the same presentation notes from Showcase #2 with an added line for who will play the game while they are speaking.

I had only one team of two students, the rest were individual project makers. This duo created Yharmin Boss Battle (which breaks my “no weapons” rule, but that’s another post).

The duo started as a pretty good team with equal effort but the coding was done mainly by one student and the other spent a good amount of time “off task”.  I really felt he wasn’t holding up his end of the project, but the project got done.  I noticed when they were filling out the presentation notes, this same student was leaving it up to his coding partner to do the presentation.  I told him they needed to divide up the presentation so that each of them would have things to say, much to his chagrin.  When it was their time to present and they were standing up front, the coding partner suddenly froze and couldn’t speak.  I could see his anxiety on his face and so could his parent. I told the non-coding partner that he would have to step up and present for the team.  He started to tell me that he couldn’t but realized his partner was not capable of presenting right then. I was so proud to see him step up and really come through for his partner.  He began their presentation and by the time he got to their favorite part and what they would have added if they had time, the coding partner had recovered and both of them were talking and sharing their wonderful project with us. Bravo!

At about this time I noticed another student hadn’t filled out his presentation notes, so I gave it back to him to fill out. He is a natural in public speaking and he probably didn’t need prompts, but it is good to have just in case.

 

Falling Down Game

 

Sometimes it is the simple games that are the most fun and addictive.  Check out Falling Down Game and Geo Dash for this group’s takes on some classics.

And thank goodness for girls who code for they add the puppies and unicorns to brighten the showcase.

Raise a Puppy

My Unicorn Maze

Snow Day Cancels Showcase #9

We had a snow day on the day of our Code Club Showcase, so it was canceled.  I decided not to reschedule it.  I sent an email to all of the parents to let them know.

I included a link to all of the finished projects with this note:

Please take a moment and have your child show you his or her project.  Give it a try.  They are all very creative and represent a lot of hard work on their part.  Well done, everyone!

We had 14 great projects this term with a lot of variety.

Drop you, Cat Sweeper, and Parkour Cat are all difficult maze-type games. Riddler, Ghost Math and Penguin Trivia ask hard questions.  In addition, there are two virtual pet projects, three chase games, two catch games, and a fighting game.

 

All original artwork is tons of work.

 

The creator of Kung-fu Master spent a lot of time designing his Sprites with different costumes for different fight poses.  He uses different keys to control each character and has a computer-controlled character for the user to battle.  He worked independently and did an amazing job.

 

Cat Sweeper, a chase, maze hybrid

I admit I was hoping to see Cat Sweeper presented so I could find out more about it. This was another independent coder who worked really hard and shows a lot of coding skill. It even has a one or two player mode. I ‘lose’ a lot every time I play it.

 

Space Adventures

The creator of Space Adventures wanted to make a Try Not to Laugh project as well but instead concentrated on a fun, challenging catch game.

I found time this week during 4th-grade recess to have the Code Club members invite a school friend to join them and test out the games they all made.  It was not the same as having a showcase presentation, but their games were played and enjoyed by all.

I certainly enjoyed coaching them and watching them develop their coding skills. Well done, everyone!

 

 

Checking Up on Individual Projects

We have two weeks until our Showcase of Projects and I’ve been checking in with all of the Code Club members to see how they are doing.  There are no team or pair projects this round which I find surprising but this year’s 4th-graders are very much unique individuals.  I tried putting two students together on one project, but they just couldn’t work together.  So they each have a similar project.  This does mean that there will be a lot of projects to present at the Showcase.

 

Keep away from Bendy

 

The character Bendy from Bendy and the Ink Machine game is featured in a couple of chase games.  How these nine-year-olds know about this horror game, beats me.  I hadn’t heard of it, but then again, I don’t like scary things.

 

Virtual Pet Dragon

 

Most of the students are in good shape.  The two virtual pet projects just need a few tweaks. The trivia and math quiz projects seem fine.

 

 

 

Answer the riddles 

The Riddler is well coded, but I think I need to show this coder how to make his own blocks for the “you answered it wrong”.  He has duplicated his code in each “else” loop. Perfect opportunity to teach code reuse or refactoring. Now I finally have a reason to show them how those dark purple blocks work.

 

 

This code shows up in each of his “else” statements.  

 

 

The flying cat and maze games could use some more work, but now that I’ve seen the state of everyone’s code, I think we might spend some time this week talking about game testing, how important it is, how to do it well and how to fix the glitches.

Equally important as testing for bugs, is to test for fun-ness.  We want our games to be fun.  Yes, we do.

Don’t Laugh

The projects for our showcases are finished and have been published on the Scratch site and I’m compiling them onto our school Code Club page in preparation for our final meetings this week when the parents come to see what we have been up to.

Chatbot and Pong game in one project

There are some pretty impressive projects.  And the students’ hard work is evident.  Maze games, Chatbots, Races, Survivor games, Pong types:

Space Pong – hit the portal that matches the ball color.

Then there’s The Epic Game where there are 4 games in one project.  The two girls working on this one came in at recess to work on it and were really motivated to meet their goal of finishing it.

The Epic Game – it took epic effort.

They learned a lot about game flow, how to use broadcast effectively and how making one seemly insignificant change can break everything. And about testing, testing, testing. I thought I would need to show them Rik Cross’s Cheat Codes, but their chatbot like game flow let us quickly get to the game that was having issues.

I’m really proud of all of these projects and coders, even the two, possibly three, Try Not To Laugh projects.  Yes, it seems we have a dancing llama infection.  The first TNTL project was a dancing llama project from Showcase #2 called Super Awesome Llama Man. I wasn’t that impressed with the project makers plan or effort, but it fit his personality and every single 4th grader who sees it seems to think it is hilarious in it’s absurdity. This year the llama man Sprite is back in a couple of Try Not to Laugh projects.  Also is a walking taco and troll face.

Llama is back – TNTL

I okayed one TNTL project but when two students project derailed because they couldn’t agree on how to proceed with their joint project, I okayed their change to a TNTL project.

 

So many llamas

I tried to find funny gifs other than the llama, but they all love the llama.  Really, it’s not funny anymore.

 

Dress Up for Showcase #5

Tomorrow is our fifth Code Club Showcase.  We have eleven projects to present.  They are solid projects.

Over the last two weeks I wasn’t sure if we were going to be ready, but here we are.  I’m actually impressed with the variety and the effort.  Many students choose to work with a partner and those partnerships worked well.  I would have liked to have seen more coding effort and algorithmic thinking but everyone seemed to have fun each week working on their projects.

New this time are projects like dress up. I haven’t seen a dress up project before in Code Club, but I think these two turned out well.  The idea is simple.  Pick the clothes for the Sprite and then decide on the Stage.

Most of the time was spent designing clothes, which has got to be the most fun in the mind of these two girls.  Each of the clothing Sprites have the same code behind them.

The code sets the initial conditions and then makes a decision not to disappear if the Sprite (named Kate) is wearing the piece of clothing.

I can see improvements to the scripting to allow the Sprite to move in the chosen outfit. As well as other ideas that turns the Dress Up project into more of a Virtual Pet project.

We did a Virtual Pet project one week this session and one student decided to make a full blown virtual pet project for her individual project.

It is really cute and well coded.  I find the directions she gives quite funny.

 

Amazing and Goofy

“Amazing and goofy at the same time (just like 4th graders)” is how I am going to be describing the Code Club Showcase of projects this time around.

The first showcase was this afternoon. I think the students were really nervous about the parents coming and worried about the logistics of the showcase but they filled out their presentation sheets and then had the chance to test out everyone’s projects before parents arrived. When the parents started arriving the students had to forego the computers for our guests and become hosts and hostesses.  They showed their family where to sit and helped them navigate to the projects. They were flexible about the presentation order as we decided to start before some parents to showed up and we switched a few around so that the parents would get to see their students presentation.

I remembered my camera but had to ask a parent to take pictures for me.  He did a nice job.

I thought the presentations went really well.  At the last minute I thought to have them ask a buddy to play the game while they were presenting and that worked out nicely.  Pair presenters decided ahead of time who would say what.

Of course the parents loved the amazing and goofy projects. They seemed to follow along well – laughing and clapping when appropriate.

Tomorrow’s projects are just as amazing and goofy. We have two more Angry Bird type games – one involving flying toilet paper and the other a flying marshmallow.

A good number of projects have strong, continual dance party music soundtrack going in the background.

Some have some pretty awesome custom Sprites or backgrounds.

And then there are the llamas.

A number of projects could have used more time to implement more of the things they had in mind. But, it is what it is.  I’ve been saying that a lot this last week. That is the lesson of the deadline. We tried to plan well, but even so, unforeseen things happen. With programming, things always seem to take longer than you think.

Tomorrow is the showcase and all these amazing and goofy projects will be presented to parents. I’m very proud of all these students. And I’ll think I’ll end there. It is what it is.

 

Inspired By

Next week is the showcase for both Code Clubs.  That means this week all the individual Scratch projects the students have been working on since November have to be finished. Going into today’s Code Club session I was concerned.  I knew of a few projects that were in need of major help.

I started out letting them know that their projects would need to be uploaded to the Scratch website by the end of the Code Club.   We talked about how the showcase would go next week – how they would be presenting their projects and the parents would get a chance to try them out. I put two sign-up lists on the board – one for help, one for finished. Then we had at it.

Fruit Collector

I am really lucky to have a great high school volunteer and he has been bringing his girlfriend to help as well.  While Josh handled the help list, I helped with the upload and sent the students to Raven who helped them fill out the project and credits page.

By the end of Code Club we had eleven projects uploaded, although not shared yet.  Two more need a little more tweaking.  Three students were absent.  Luckily, I can give them some recess time in the lab tomorrow or Friday.

Tomorrow’s Code Club projects will all have to be done.  No exceptions because I don’t see those students during the week. My daughter is coming with me tomorrow to help with the project instructions and credit page.

That’s the nuts and bolts of Code Club for today and tomorrow.  What has me sitting here writing up this blog right now is my excitement for these projects. The creativity and hard work displayed in these projects is quite impressive.

Save Wizard Boy

Save Wizard Boy is a favorite Code Club maze game with green dots for points and a continual hip-hop beat as background music.  The creators had the most difficulty working as a team and agreeing on what they wanted in the game. This is written in their notes: “Making this game was fun. I made it in Code Club with my friend. Making games on computers is fun and if you like to play games on computers you can go to Scratch.”

Mipio1

Mipio1 is another favorite platform 2-d world with gravity.  Quite challenging for most of the students who attempted this type of game.  I love the creativity and hand drawn city-scape. The 4th grader writes in her notes “What inspired me to introduce Mipio1 is the game called Mario and I love the game Mario. The game is sort of similar to that game.”

Patriots

There were a number of sport type games – one called Wizard Soccer and two about football. In the Patriots each standard Scratch football player Sprite was customized.

Each project seems to be the best that student or team could produce.  I truly didn’t think they’d be this impressive.